An annual highlight for Continental Marketplace is the Pumpkin Festival held at Scotland’s Theme Park.
The festival attracts thousands of people to the Theme Park over selected dates throughout October in the lead up to Halloween.
As well as the opportunity to pick your own pumpkin, the family friendly Festival features theatrical storytelling, a Pumpkin Trail, games for all ages and an exclusive Pumpkin Express Train.
operational detail
The team are involved in every aspect of the festival including event planning to preparing the designated site to accommodate the significant footfall of people. Health and safety management is of paramount importance alongside waste and recycling management to ensure the site looks its best every day.
Carefully selected rides are transformed in keeping with the pumpkin theme by staff creating suitable visuals in the joinery workshop enabling the event to be as bespoke as possible. Weeks of behind the scenes preparation go into the Pumpkin Festival to make it a memorable experience that has families coming back year after year.
SAFETY
A full risk assessment was conducted prior to the event and all elements of the event comply with all necessary health and safety requirements and fire regulation. Subsequent to this our afore-noted safety strategy was implemented.
COMMUNITY BENEFITS / SOCIAL VALUE
Les Hoey Dreammaker Foundation is a local charity with whom we have worked for many years.
We provide complimentary tickets for the children they support to ensure that they can enjoy a visit to Santa without parents having to worry about additional costs at this time of year. We also have many school and nursery groups who benefit from a reduced group rate when visiting the event. We have amended the event over the years to ensure that it is fully accessible.
We took advice from Reach Lanarkshire Autism Association – who allowed us to create an Autism-friendly showing.
EVENT SUCCESS & LINKS
The event saw increased visitor numbers, more than 25,000 visitors over duration of the period including primary schools, nurseries and family visits. This was an increase of approximately 20% on 2017.
